


Cashing in My Bad Luck

by fearandlothering



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-03 19:40:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2883023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fearandlothering/pseuds/fearandlothering
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An (eventual) series of vignettes with Sera as one of Hawke's companions in Kirkwall prior to Inquisition. Will eventually extend to involve ships and other companions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It all started with "Purple Hawke and Sera would be the cutest friends," then extended to, "But oh my god, can you imagine Sera and Isabela?" And thus, an AU was born.
> 
> So far this is just the prologue, feeling the AU out, I'm still undecided on Hawke's eventual class (and thereby the sibling involved), and whether this will eventually extend to Inquisition canon proper.

She hadn't come to Kirkwall with many expectations. A few. One, the nobles were known to be insufferable prigs. Two, that the city had some major issues, that those issues had zero to do with refugees from her homeland, and everything to do with massively stupid political bullshit. And three, it had people who needed help, and a lot of them: Marchers, Fereldan, whoever.  
  
In those small things, Kirkwall easily lived up to it's grandiose (and terrible) reputation. The alienage was smaller than hers had been, but the slums surrounding it were barely better. Refugees faced starvation and lack of work, and that was only if they were lucky enough to even find their way into the city and some kind of a home. Homelessness ran rampant outside the gates of Kirkwall, and all of the plagues to go with it: people didn't need to be carrying the Blight to be sick, troubled, all at their wit's end.  
  
Truth told, Kirkwall actually _exceeded_ her poor expectations, in ways that...well, defied expectation. So much for the status quo.  
  
It helped, at least, knowing she wasn't alone in this Maker-forsaken pit, not that the idea of shared suffering was one she got off on: using that as ammunition made her jaw clench uncomfortably, and it'd hurt to move for hours. But...friends. Friends were good.  
  
She hadn't had expectations there. Sure, there had been some Jenny contacts, smuggling contracts, money to find her way in, and any extra to help who she could (it was a high price to pay, and while refugees piled up outside the city walls, opportunities for those refugees were scarce and dangerous, and not everyone could so easily defend themselves). Red Jenny contacts were better: made to help people, not the opportunist Coterie, or worse, that greedy, _mean_ of mercenaries who didn't really much care who they hurt.  
  
If she'd had to have it, the Coterie was an easier choice. Not always a better one, but more palatable maybe. And not one she'd had to stick with. She made easy contact with Lirene, spent the bulk of her time either with the refugees, or in the Hanged Man, answering and drawing up Red Jenny requests, and for a time, she knew people, the good ones knew her back, and it _worked_.  
  
And one dreary afternoon, on the close of the miserable choke damp, it was as if Andraste herself had burst through the city gates, armed to the teeth, with a smile that--  
  
No, no way. She'd start to sound like Varric with all of that. Hawke didn't need the romance, she was a force to be reckoned with (and sometimes stared at in awe) without it. Hawke, well. _Hawke_. Funny, _gorgeous_ , and to top it all off, she had heart. Too much of it for someone who'd been through as much, seen as much death (and darkspawn, ew), who always seemed to get the raw end of a deal and still somehow laughed it off like it didn't matter.  
  
She knew it did, though. She knew, because she did the same thing: ignore the problem until it goes away, and if that doesn't work, laugh at it and hopefully it hides in shame. (In retrospect, maybe not the best policy. But if you couldn't laugh at yourself in Kirkwall, there'd be little else to laugh _at_.)  
  
Hawke treated everyone like family. Maybe because she was too afraid to lose them. It didn't really matter. Hawke cared, and she was worth it. Worth following. Sera didn't really want to think about the day it wasn't anymore.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus we hit the point of canon divergence. While I've kept many of the basic elements of Sera's backstory the same: Denerim, Emmauld, the timeline dictates some basic divergence regarding Sera's age and potential interaction with the Hero of Ferelden (the latter of which is basically moot for the duration).

She found a home with Hawke that she hadn't expected. No one that poor, with a family of that size, an uncle with that kind of reputation, with a history of that much personal tragedy should possibly have been expected to be that welcoming, or giving. It just went to show that even her own assumptions about people could be poor ones, and that her rankling against assumption at all--something she was still apparently learning--was justified.

Hawke wasn't just pretty, though those eyes and...Maker those hips that made her look like she was almost dancing when she walked, and she wasn't just pretty damn clever, though she could deliver those one-liners with narry a practiced ease, she was _nice_. Which, in Lowtown, was sometimes a bit like randomly happening upon money in the street: it rarely happened and often brightened the whole day. She had a family, which was more than a lot of refugees washed up with, but she seemed to recognize that.

It wasn't just that Hawke's family was important to her, but that she saw everyone _as_ family.

Sera wasn't used to it at all. From alienage orphan having seen far too much in the recesses of Denerim that no one _wanted_ to see, to a semi-adoption within a noblewoman's household, she knows what the barest acceptance feels like, sure. But Lady Emmauld's lies, the need to prop herself up against an assumption against Sera's own self-worth, overpowered any sense of family that relationship could have ever had.

She had been telling herself for years that real parents couldn't possibly live with themselves like that, but with nothing to prove her right, and only evidence toward the contrary, she'd also been doubting herself for just as long.

Leandra, at least, proved her right.

It manifested in small ways at first. A soft smile, a pat on the wrist when she'd come by for Hawke, nicknames like "dear" that would have been condescending, had they come from anyone else. But the longer they stayed, the closer Marian came to paying off her debts, the even more at ease Leandra became, until, one day, Sera burst in to Gamlen's hovel, looking for Marian, and found Leandra alone in front of the fireplace, covered in flour.

"She's not home," she'd said, and there was a strain in the woman's voice Sera couldn't quite place (and wasn't sure she wanted to--some secrets were too painful to bring up).

"Well, that's just grand, isn't it? Never around when you need her, flighty like a damn bird. Ha. O-oh. Right, sorry about the damn."

Instead of turning her away, however, all Leandra said was, "You _are_ welcome to stay."

She thought about leaving: this wasn't her place, her family, her mother. She recalled enough about Marian's reluctance to talk about the situation back home, with a skeevy broke uncle (and Sera had bitten down on her tongue to keep back the insistence that Gamlen's misfortune only served him right), a younger sibling who couldn't keep his mouth shut, and having to constantly hide her talents (talents that still, frankly, left Sera a little uneasy and sometimes a little awestruck). Her mother rarely came into the conversation at all. The silence, frankly, had said enough.

Still, acceptance of any kind was foreign enough that in her sudden shock, she just nodded instead.

The best thing about Leandra was that she worked just as hard as she expected anyone else to. Her children handled the debts, and the jobs that had come about in their desperate hour. She, on the other hand, maintained what little of her brother's hovel that she could. Her calloused hands spoke more than she ever could, though running away from a noble life to live one of poverty for love was all very romantic.

And stupid, but she kept that to herself too. It was dumb, a terrible decision, but still, she understood it. Leandra had broken barriers running away from home, leaving her fortune to idle hands while she took her life in her own. It might have been stupid, but it was also very brave. Daunting.

And for a budding rebel nurturing sparks of resistance in her heart, it was just a little heroic too.

But only just. (After all, she was pretty damn certain she wouldn't let a mage talk her out of her pants. Even _if_....)

In-between the stories, Leandra's work-rough hands showed her how to knead and roll and shape the same sort of dough Lady Emmauld had once claimed to have mastered. The association made her stomach churn, but there was nothing here to distrust. Just a quiet, aging woman with a world placed on her shoulders, who had lost too much and still kept her heart open. Enough, at least, to learn that her daughter's penchant for picking up society's strays was a fact of life, and not something easily chided. An old woman with pain her voice, and a lifetime of regret in her sad, yet encouraging glances.

It was baking in that small little house nestled away in Lowtown with all the others that looked the same that Sera began to wonder if THIS is what a mother was. Not some perfected ideal of "always helpful, always nice, always caring," but a woman who, while she'd made mistakes like anyone would do, still cared in spite of all of it. A woman whose mistakes hadn't left her desperately resorting to pride to save face, but who let her working hands and effort do the talking.

Sera wondered, in those small quiet moments, whether this is what mothers really tried to teach their daughters: not pride, not lingering vanity, or living vicariously, but that effort mattered. And maybe even that small changes were enough to brighten any day (yes, even those with Gamlen in them).

And maybe, but only a little, that forgiveness was first gifted internally, before it could ever be truly granted otherwise.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Standard "this is an AU" and "I don't own this" warnings here.

She knows she should hate him. Or, at the very least, be scared shitless of him. He has a _thing_ living in his head that makes his eyes _glow_ , and screw that. But aside from the freakishly weird light show behind his eyes, or beyond that maybe (but Sera aims for easy to understand, not depth), something about him just....

Well, it doesn't excuse it. Spirits, demons, whatever they are, it's all bad news.

But the kind of life he strives for when the spirit isn't giving him right away in a game of hide-and-seek speaks to those ideals she's nestled close enough to her heart for so long that they've become her meaning (and like that, she can sometimes _almost_ understand the whole Justice bit...almost).

Anders couldn't give a piss about the nobility: plus. He also did the whole magic healing thing for free, for people who really needed it: definite plus. Warden: plus, since he cared about saving the world from all that creepy shit or whatever wardens were supposed to do. He cared about justice and freedom and equalization, and the whole lot of it, and most of the time, that was a plus too. His mage-focused tunnel-vision when it came to that whole freedom speech: not so much.

Most of the time, she could get over the whole apostate business. It'd worked with Hawke so far too, and while the growing use of magic in their small budding "family" still gave her shivers (and no, not in the fun way), they were helping (and helping to dismantle Kirkwall's fucked up sense of how the whole noble class thing should work. They'd complain about the refugees polluting the city (or tainting it, when all they'd been trying to do was run away from danger of being tainted themselves), but they never did anything to help. Not when they could see so many tomorrows in front of them that the danger was political, never real.

It was with his work with Kirkwall's refugees that they began talking. She'd spent enough time with Lirene to see the fabled "healer" come in once or twice for an emergency, but it hadn't ever blossomed beyond an acute familiarity. Not until Hawke, as she always did, welcomed him into their circle with open arms.

Seeking him out in his small, cramped makeshift clinic one evening, she finally had a chance to ask him something lingering on her mind, when before, there had never been time, never been names.

"Are there times you can't save everybody?"

Anders sat on an empty cot with a heavy sigh, brushing a hand through his messy hair nervously. "Regrettably. Yes."

"What good is magic then?" she asked, crossing her arms.

"Excuse me?"

"You know, if it's s'posed to _serve man_ or whatever." It wasn't fair. She knew that, but having to be faced with that reality every day? It was bad enough she couldn't put an arrow through the face of everyone who deserved it, that hurting people, intentionally and sometimes with abandon, all too often went unpunished. But why did it have to feel like every time they lost one of their own: the helpless, the poor, the destitute, the infringed, that it was the _real_ punishment?

"You can't save everyone, Sera. I try. _You_ try. But you and I both know you can't. Not always."

What kind of Maker did that? Just left the world to rot in unfairnness and greed and the sort of desperation that always led to everything else bad too?

"Stupid," she muttered under her breath.

"I know."


End file.
